Conventionally, in an analysis technique for a semiconductor device, a focused ion beam (hereinafter, also FIB) is used when a sample is to be processed. A transmission electron microscope (hereinafter, also TEM) is used during shape observation of a processed sample. The FIB and the TEM are analysis techniques suitable for downscaling in a manufacturing process of a semiconductor device.
In the TEM, the film thickness of a sample needs to be sufficiently small. Meanwhile, in processing of a sample with the FIB, a portion necessary for processing (hereinafter, also “necessary portion”) is first extracted from a sample body using a manipulator probe or the like. The extracted necessary portion is then fixed to a mesh supported on an upper portion of a holder. Thin film processing with the FIB is then performed on the necessary portion.
However, in a semiconductor device including various materials, it is difficult to even, that is, to flatten a processing surface to be processed with the FIB due to different etching rates according to the materials. To address this problem, it is conceivable to process the semiconductor device from many directions. In this case, a conventional method requires control on both attitudes of the necessary portion and the mesh before the necessary portion is fixed to the mesh after the extraction. This causes the processing of the semiconductor device from many directions to be difficult. As a result, it is difficult to ensure evenness in the processing surface of the semiconductor device by the conventional method.
During the observation with the TEM, the holder supporting the mesh from below becomes a barrier that blocks transmission of electron beams. Accordingly, the sample can be observed only from directions in which the holder does not block the electron beams and there is a large restriction on the observation directions of the sample.
Furthermore, with the TEM, an energy-dispersive X-ray analysis (hereinafter, also TEM-EDX) is performed in some cases. In these cases, the holder becomes a factor of occurrence of a background signal. The background signal adversely affects analysis accuracy of the TEM-EDX.